A Powerful Video Highlighting Child Slavery
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'Elizabeth' was raped by 10 UN peacekeepers in Ivory Coast |
Some things cost more than we realize click on the link below to watch
http://stopchildslavery.com/2008/05/09/
a-powerful-video-highlighting-child-slavery/
Peacekeepers 'abusing children'
Children as young as six are being sexually abused by peacekeepers and aid workers, says a leading UK charity.
Children in post-conflict areas are being abused by the very people drafted into such zones to help look after them, says Save the Children.
After research in Ivory Coast, southern Sudan and Haiti, the charity proposed an international watchdog be set up.
Save the Children said it had sacked three workers for breaching its codes, and called on others to do the same.
The three men were all dismissed in the past year for having had sex with girls aged 17 - which the charity said was a sackable offence even though not illegal.
The UN has said it welcomes the charity's report, which it will study closely.
Save the Children says the most shocking aspect of child sex abuse is that most of it goes unreported and unpunished, with children too scared to speak out.
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A 13-year-old girl, "Elizabeth" described to the BBC how 10 UN peacekeepers gang-raped her in a field near her Ivory Coast home.
'Elizabeth' tells the BBC about her abuse
"They grabbed me and threw me to the ground and they forced themselves on me... I tried to escape but there were 10 of them and I could do nothing," she said.
"I was terrified. Then they just left me there bleeding."
No action has been taken against the soldiers.
The report also found that aid workers have been sexually abusing boys and girls.
"In recent years, some important commitments have been made by the UN, the wider international community and by humanitarian and aid agencies to act on this problem," said Save the Children UK chief executive Jasmine Whitbread.
To watch the video from BBC click on the link below:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7420973.stm
"However, all humanitarian and peacekeeping agencies working in emergency situations, including Save the Children UK, must own up to the fact that they are vulnerable to this problem and tackle it head on."
UN SEXUAL ABUSE SCANDALS
2003 - Nepalese troops accused of sexual abuse while serving in DR Congo. Six are later jailed
2004 - Two UN peacekeepers repatriated after being accused of abuse in Burundi
2005 - UN troops accused of rape and sexual abuse in Sudan
2006 - UN personnel accused of rape and exploitation on missions in Haiti and Liberia
2007 - UN launches probe into sexual abuse claims in Ivory Coast
After research involving hundreds of children from Ivory Coast, southern Sudan and Haiti, the charity said better reporting mechanisms needed to be introduced to deal with what it called "endemic failures" in responding to reported cases of abuse.
It also said efforts should be made to strengthen worldwide child protection systems.
Heather Kerr, Save the Children's Ivory Coast country director, says little is being done to support the victims.
"It's a minority of people but they are using their power to sexually exploit children and children that don't have the voice to report about this.
"They are suffering sexual exploitation and abuse in silence."
Save the Children says the international community has promised a policy of zero-tolerance to child sexual abuse, but that this is not being followed up by action on the ground.
A UN spokesman, Nick Birnback, said that it was impossible to ensure "zero incidents" within an organization that has up to 200,000 personnel serving around the world.
"What we can do is get across a message of zero tolerance, which for us means zero complacency when credible allegations are raised and zero impunity when we find that there has been malfeasance that's occurred," he told the BBC.
Call for action on child abuse
There is "chronic inconsistency" in response to allegations of child abuse by peacekeepers and aid workers, the author of a report on the problem says.
Corinna Csaky from Save the Children suggests better monitoring and more transparency is needed.
To hear the interview by BBC with Corinna Csaky from Save the Children click on the link below:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7422183.stm
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Human trafficking expert warns of risks to children in disaster zones
The Associated Press
Monday, May 26, 2008
VIENNA, Austria: Natural disasters such as the cyclone in Myanmar can put children at risk for abuse and exploitation, a human trafficking expert said Monday.
Eva Biaudet, of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said she had no specific information about the situation of children in Myanmar, but noted that similar disasters, as well as conflicts, have put minors at risk of being taken advantage of and abused.
"When there are these kind of catastrophes when the state fails, when there are no systems children are extremely at risk for not only of course being just abandoned ... but also for abuse and exploitation," Biaudet told reporters on the sidelines of a two-day OSCE human trafficking conference that began Monday.
"It is a very good place for traffickers to be when the state sort of fails," Biaudet said, adding that children in conflict zones were also at the risk of falling prey to such criminals.
Last week, UNICEF said it believed the number of children left without guardians in Myanmar because of the cyclone is more than 600 and could rise.
To watch the slide show of the event click on the link below:
http://www.osce.org/photos/show_photos.php?thumb=0&grp=434
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Child abuse may ‘mark’ genes in the brains of suicide victims
May. 6, 2008
Landmark study shows how environment affects genes in brains of men who killed themselves
A team of McGill University scientists has discovered important differences between the brains of suicide victims and so-called normal brains. Although the genetic sequence was identical in the suicide and non-suicide brains, there were differences in their epigenetic marking – a chemical coating influenced by environmental factors.
All of the 13 suicide victims in the study had experienced abuse as children.
“It’s possible the changes in epigenetic markers were caused by the exposure to childhood abuse, although in humans it’s difficult to establish causality between early childhood and epigenetic markers, in the way we have established this in animal subjects,” said Moshe Szyf, a professor in McGill’s Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics. “The big remaining questions are whether scientists could detect similar changes in blood DNA – which could lead to diagnostic tests – and whether we could design interventions to erase these differences in epigenetic markings”.
In the first study of its kind, Szyf, a professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics; Gustavo Turecki, Department of Psychiatry who practices at the Douglas Hospital; Michael Meaney, a professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology and Neurosurgery, who is also at the Douglas Hospital; and McGill postdoctoral research fellow Patrick McGowan have built on their world-renowned epigenetics work to uncover differences in the DNA in the brains of a group of male suicide victims from Quebec. The all-McGill study is set to be published in the May 6, 2008 edition of the online journal Public Library of Science (PLoS ONE).
Epigenetics is the study of changes in the function of genes that don’t involve changes in the sequences of DNA. The DNA is inherited from our parents; it remains fixed throughout life and is identical in every part of the body. During gestation, however, the genes in our DNA are marked by a chemical coating called DNA methylation. These marks are somewhat sensitive to one’s environment, especially early in life.
The epigenetic marks punctuate the DNA and program it to express the right genes at the appropriate time and place.
The researchers examined a set of genes that code for rRNA, a basic component of the machinery that creates protein in cells. Protein synthesis is critical for learning, memory and the building of new connections in the brain; it can affect decision-making and other behavior. The scientists found that rRNA can be regulated epigenetically.
In previous studies in laboratory rats, the group proved that simple maternal behavior during early childhood has a profound effect on genes and behavior in ways that are sustained throughout life. However, these effects on gene expression and stress responses can also be reversed in adult life through treatments known to affect the genomic marking known as DNA methylation.
The brain samples in the latest study came from the Quebec Suicide Brain Bank, administered by Dr. Turecki of the Douglas Mental Health University Institute. With the support of the Bureau du Coroner du Québec (Office of the Chief Medical Examiner), the McGill Group for Suicide Studies (MGSS) founded the Quebec Suicide Brain Bank (QSBB) at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, to promote studies on the phenomenon of suicide. Research carried out on brain tissue can help develop intervention and prevention programs to help people suffering mental distress and who are at risk of committing suicide.
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China Says Abusive Child Labor Ring Is Exposed
May 1, 2008
By DAVID BARBOZA
SHANGHAI — China said Wednesday that it had broken up a child labor ring that forced children from poor, inland areas to work in booming coastal cities, acknowledging that severe labor abuses extended into the heart of its export economy.
Authorities in southern China’s Guangdong Province, near Hong Kong, said they had made several arrests and had already “rescued” more than 100 children from factories in the city of Dongguan, one of the country’s largest manufacturing centers for electronics and consumer goods sold around the world. The officials said they were investigating reports that hundreds of other rural children had been lured or forced into captive, almost slave like conditions for minimal pay.
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Color China Photo/Associated Press
Chinese officials took more than 100 children from factories in the southern city of Dongguan. |
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The children, mostly between the ages of 13 and 15, were often tricked or kidnapped by employment agencies in an impoverished part of western Sichuan Province called Liangshan and then sent to factory towns in Guangdong, where they were sometimes forced to work 300 hours a month, according to government officials and accounts from the state-owned media. The legal working age in China is 16.
The labor scandal is the latest embarrassment for China as it prepares to host the Olympic Games this summer. For much of the past year, the country has been plagued by damaging reports about severe pollution, dangerous exports, riots in Tibet and the ensuing disruptions to its Olympic torch relay by Tibet’s sympathizers, among other groups.
The abuses may also reflect the combined pressures of worker shortages, high inflation and a rising currency that have reduced profit margins of some Chinese factories and forced them to scramble for an edge — even an illegal one — to stay competitive.
The child labor ring, which was first uncovered by Southern Metropolis, a crusading newspaper based in Guangzhou, came less than a year after China was rocked by exposure of a similar problem in a less developed part of central China. Last June, labor officials in Shanxi and Henan Provinces said they had rescued hundreds of people, including children, from slave labor conditions in rural brick kilns. Many of those workers said they had been kidnapped.
The earlier case, which local officials initially sought to keep quiet, set off a national uproar in China and prompted a sharp response from President Hu Jintao, who vowed a broad crackdown on labor abuses. Local officials in Guangdong may have moved quickly to acknowledge the latest incident to keep it from becoming a running scandal as the Olympics approach.
The police in Guangdong said Wednesday that they had formed teams to search for child laborers in several coastal cities, including Dongguan and Shenzhen, another big manufacturing center, but disclosed nothing about the companies involved in employing the children, or the extent of the problem.
Officials did not identify the specific factories or products involved, and it is unclear whether any of them were suppliers to global corporations. But many companies in Dongguan and Shenzhen, where land and labor costs are typically higher than elsewhere in the country, are part of the supply chain for the country’s export manufacturers. The authorities have also said little so far about the identities of the children they claim to have rescued.
“These youngsters have no ID cards, so it makes it difficult to identify them,” said Zhang Xiang, a spokesman for the Guangdong Labor Bureau.
In recent years, Beijing has stepped up its efforts to crack down on child labor and labor law violations. Last August, Beijing revoked the license of a factory accused of using child labor to produce Olympic merchandise. Several other suppliers were also punished for labor law violations.
But experts say rising costs of labor, energy and raw material, and labor shortages in some parts of southern China have forced some factory owners to cut costs or find new sources of cheap labor, including child labor.
Even factories that supply global companies, including Wal-Mart Stores, have been accused in recent years of using child labor and violating local labor laws. Big corporations have stepped up inspections of factories that produce goods for them. But suppliers have become adept at evading such scrutiny by providing fake wage and work schedule data that suggest they abide by labor laws. Experts say the labor problems discovered in Dongguan are not uncommon.
“The Liangshan child labor case is quite typical,” said Hu Xingdou, a professor of economics and social policy at the Beijing Institute of Technology. “China’s economy is developing at a fascinating speed, but often at the expense of laws, human rights and environmental protection.”
Professor Hu said that while Beijing had pushed to improve labor conditions throughout the nation, local governments were still driven by incentives to grow their economy, and so they tried to lure cheap labor.
“Most of the work force comes from underdeveloped or poverty-stricken areas,” he said. “Some children are even sold by their parents, who often don’t have any idea of the working conditions.”
In a series of articles this week, journalists working for Southern Metropolis wrote that they had traveled to Liangshan Prefecture in Sichuan Province, an area of western China populated by ethnic minority groups and plagued by drugs and a lack of good jobs, to pose as recruiters and interview parents and residents.
The newspaper said recruiters and labor agencies working in Liangshan often selected and transported children south, where they were then “sold” to factories at virtual auctions in Guangdong Province.
At some coastal factories, children were even lined up and selected based on their body type, wrote the journalists, who also investigated factory areas in Guangdong.
The newspaper also said that children were paid about 42 cents an hour, far below the local minimum wage of about 64 cents an hour. By law, overtime pay is much higher.
Chen Fulin, a government spokesman in Liangshan Prefecture, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that the articles about child labor in Southern Metropolis were accurate.
“So far, we have detected and found four people in Zhaojue County suspected of luring the youngsters from Liangshan to Dongguan and forcing them to work in factories,” he said. “We are dealing with the illegal employment agencies and the labor dealers, according to the law.”
Officials in the city of Dongguan say they are now investigating all factories in the area to determine whether any are employing children.
In its report, Southern Metropolis said some children were threatened with death if they tried to escape.
The newspaper did not identify the coastal factories where the children worked, but the report said that one was a toy factory in Dongguan and that it had not been difficult for the journalists to uncover the labor scandal.
“Since journalists could discover the facts by secret interviews in a few days,” Southern Metropolis wrote in a separate editorial on Tuesday, “how could the labor departments show no interest in it and ignore it for such a long time?”
Chen Yang contributed research.
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PAKISTAN: Child labor on the rise in quake-hit north
Photo: David Swanson/IRIN
Muhsin Iqbal, 10, previously attended school. Today he scavenges the street to support his family
ABBOTABAD, 25 May 2008 (IRIN) - At first glance, it is hard to believe Muhsin, 10, once went to school regularly and had dreams of being a pilot. Rummaging through the trash in the town of Abbotabad in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, he now scavenges the ground for cardboard, empty bottles and metal scrap that he sells to make less than US$1 a day.
“I had to drop out of school,” he told IRIN, wiping his soiled face on his sleeve as he took a break. “But what else could I do? After the earthquake I had to help my family.”
Muhsin’s father died after their rented house in the nearby town of Balokot, the quake’s epicentre, collapsed around them, leaving him and his two brothers no choice but to move to Abbotabad with their mother to find work.
“I want to return to school, but I can’t,” said Muhsin. “It’s simply not possible.”
There are thousands of children like Muhsin across quake-affected northern Pakistan who have been forced out of the classroom and into the labor market to support their families in the aftermath of the October 2005 earthquake.
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208 children see the light of freedom in one day
The Minister of Labor joins secret raids with BBA activists and former child laborers
7th May 2008: In one of the largest rescue operations in the country, 208 child laborers were rescued from child/ bonded labor from more than 120 establishments. In an unprecedented move, the Labor Minister of Jharkhand , instead of passing the order from the table as usual, joined in the raids with BBA activists. Mr. Bhanu Pratap Sahi Created history as for the first time, a minister screened the restaurants, teashops and garages on the streets for 4 hours in the state capital Ranchi and rescued 185 child laborers.
Another milestone that BBA covered was transforming the former victims into change agents. Kalu, Abdul, Bunty former victims of trafficking for forced and going through rehabilitation in Bal Ashram were leading various rescue teams in Delhi whereas the entire operation in Ranchi was planned and executed in the leadership of Govind Khanal another former child laborer turned activists and currently taking the responsibility of National Secretary in Jharkhand.
On one hand in Delhi, raids were conducted targeting zari embroidery units and tin factories rescuing 23 children. Children were involved in embroidery or cutting of tin sheets to make paint cans. On other hand in Ranchi the focus was on roadside restaurants and domestic child labor.
These rescue operations in both the states have once again highlighted the issue of trafficking for forced labor. All these children between the age group 6-16 were brought from their native villages to either the capital city of Jharkhand or Delhi to work under conditions amounting to slavery- working for minimal or no wages and for very long hours with no freedom of movement or seek a way out of the place.
Ramesh Gupta, President BBA, said, “The raids underscore the significance of what can be achieved if the administrative machinery has the will to implement the law. What the Labor Minister in Jharkhand has done can liberate children in the country from child labor and provide education to all children, if all politicians follow this lead.”
Bhanu Pratap Sahi conveyed this heartening message during the press conference that followed- “I am happy that we were able to conduct this raid. Whenever I saw children working and living in those situations, I felt the necessity to take action. We will make Jharkhand child labor free in 2 years’ time.”
Clearly this is the beginning of such major operations and the BBA team is all geared up for it.
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Child labor fears over Euro 2008 giveaway balls
Tue Apr 22, 2008 9:32am EDT
ZURICH (Reuters) - Footballs given away free by Switzerland's Credit Suisse Group in the build-up to Euro 2008 may have been produced by child laborers, the bank said on Tuesday.
Credit Suisse said it took "relevant contractual precautions and confirmations" when it placed the order for the footballs, which were produced in Pakistan, but it "cannot at this time completely rule out the possible involvement of child labor."
The bank, which is the main sponsor of Switzerland's national team, launched the campaign to give away 200,000 children's footballs last week, accompanied by a blaze of publicity.
Swiss national coach Koebi Kuhn and star player Hakan Yakin signed some of the footballs, which were handed out to get Swiss people -- particularly young footballers -- in the mood for Euro 2008, which Switzerland is co-hosting with Austria in June.
But television news show Tagesschau reported that children made the balls in villages in Pakistan, making just 0.39 Swiss francs ($0.39) for each finished item.
Credit Suisse said it attached great importance to cracking down on child labor and would therefore donate 1 million Swiss francs ($988,100) to UNICEF, the U.N. children's agency.
Despite the bank's precautions, "Credit Suisse cannot exclude with absolute certainty at this time that children may have been involved in part of the football manufacture by the producer in Pakistan or their sub-suppliers, respectively," it said in a statement.
The bank said it is also investing both its internal and external processes.
(Reporting by Sam Cage, editing by Mark Ledsom and David Cowell)
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Education quality and literacy stressed at Tokyo Conference on African Development
© UNESCO/Katy Anis
Africa suffers from a shortage of teachers
05-06-2008 - "Education is at the heart of the quest for human security", UNESCO's Director-General told delegates at the Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (28 to 30 May 2008, Yokohama, Japan).
Citing the acute shortage of trained teachers in Africa, widespread low learning achievement, and the high proportion of adults – 4 out of 10, over 150 million in total –– who cannot read and write, the Director-General said that particular attention should be paid to education quality and literacy. He also stressed the need to address the full Education for All agenda in Africa, and not limit actions to the two education-related Millennium Development Goals.
Participants agreed on an action plan designed to support African growth and development in the next 5 years under the TICAD (Tokyo International Conference on African Development) process. The process will focus on: basic education; post basic education and higher education/research; multi-sectoral approaches and educational management. Jointly organized by Japan, UNDP and the World Bank, the conference was attended by 51 African countries and 34 other countries.
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